Bridge and Stuff
Jim called me up again the other day, and we played bridge both today and yesterday. It’s quite obvious that I’ve gotten rusty (before yesterday, my last sanctioned game had been with Jim back in August). We took second-to-last and dead last, both with 41% games, though today’s game played better than it scored. Our defense was rock-solid (with one horrible, stupid, blatantly notable exception in which I doubled our opponents’ game-level contract, and although we could easily have set them by two tricks, they ended up making it). Our offense was mediocre, but our bidding was pretty good, I daresay. We’re trying out some new things in our conventions, however, which are working out alright. Both today and yesterday, we played a control-showing step response to two clubs, which is actually quite clever (imo, better than the point-showing step response which I swore by back in sophomore year). Today, we also used a forcing 1NT (the perfect response to Sheri’s insistence upon weak jump-shifts – I have to show this to more people even if we don’t play 2/1) and upside-down attitude carding (statistically better than regular attitude, but more confusing. For instance, you now show a doubleton by playing the high card first if you’re on lead but the low card first if you’re following suit). Now, I need to get Jim to learn Puppet Stayman and Raptor Notrump, and we’ll be playing exactly what I want to play, except possibly for a different discarding system. Jim lent me his copy of Hand Evaluation by Mike Lawrence, which I look forward to reading.
A Notable Hand From Tonight – Our Kick-Ass Defense
I picked up the King-Two doubleton in Spades, the singleton Five in Diamonds, the King-Ten-third in Hearts, and seven Clubs including the Queen, Jack, Six, Five, and Two. Dealer, at my left, opens 1C, and Jim overcalls 2S (showing 5-11 HCP and exactly 6 Spades. Moreover, we were vulnerable, so he had either two of the top three or three of the top five Spades). RHO bids 3H, and although I only have two-card support for partner, all of my points appear to be working and I have a second source of tricks, so I bid 3S. LHO then bids 4H, which gets passed out. I lead the King of Spades, and down comes dummy, which includes three Spades to the Jack and the Ace-King-Four-Three of Clubs. Jim plays a low Spade (encouraging, now that we’re using upside-down attitude), and I continue with my Two. He takes the Queen, and huddles. At last, he leads a diamond, which is won in dummy. Declarer then leads a heart, finesses with the Jack, and I take my King. I can see eleven clubs and know my partner has a six-card spade suit, so I lead the Five, hoping for a void in Jim’s hand. Dummy plays the Ace, and, as luck would have it, Jim ruffs. He leads another diamond (after all, I signaled low with my Five), and I ruff, which surprises everyone. I lead the Six of Clubs, which Jim ruffs, and he leads back a Spade, which I ruff. I lead a final Club, which Jim ruffs. He leads back another Spade, which Declarer ruffs, but I am already out of trump, and am happy to discard a Club. Declarer crosses to dummy in trump, and I happily note that both Jim and I are out of trump at this point. Declarer took the rest of the tricks, but I was thrilled. We set them by 4 tricks (though undoubled and nonvulnerable) for one of our few top boards of the evening. Since it was the last hand of the night, we took out the cards afterwards and looked at the deal. Only then did Jim understand how I could have guessed his Club void.
On a totally different hand, I held the Ace-King-Ten of Clubs and the King-Jack-Ten-Nine-Eight-Five of Diamonds, and our illustrious opponents eventually reached 2NT by LHO after I had bid diamonds. Jim led the Queen of Diamonds, and Dummy showed up with the Ace doubleton, but played low on the first trick. However, I made one of my first conscious safety plays! If Jim had a second diamond, we were in good shape no matter what, but if he had a singleton, we’d be in trouble. However, it didn’t cost me anything to overtake his Queen, so I did! I then played the Five to knock out Dummy’s Ace, and lo and behold – Jim really did have the singleton Queen! We play Lavinthal discards, and Jim requested a Spade on this second Diamond trick. However, Declarer wasn’t watching, and finessed me in Spades. This lost to Jim’s King, and he led a Club to me (this was luck, I think). I took the Ace, ran the Diamonds, grabbed the King of Clubs, and led another Spade. Although Declarer took the rest of the tricks, he was quite rattled after going down 3 (again, undoubled and nonvulnerable). I don’t remember if this was a good board for us, but it was certainly fun to play. In the post-mortem, Jim mentioned that if I had not overtaken his Queen at Trick One, he would not have had another good lead. I was pretty proud of this!
After bridge, I went sledding with some people from Edina, and we ended up going to Cassie’s house and talking until 3:30 AM. I don’t know what it is about Cassie’s house (it’s quite possible that it’s Cassie herself, since she always has something fascinating to talk about. Don’t ever change, Cass!), but it fosters the greatest conversations. Topics ranged from movies to the news to world events to travel to parenting to the history of holidays to sensationalist diseases. It was great.
I must now go to sleep: I unfortunately still have work to do for grad schools, job applications, and the road trip, but still plan on spending lots of time just hanging out with friends, so I need to get rest now.